


Nymph

by NeoVenus22



Category: The Secret Garden
Genre: F/M, Porn Battle, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary finally returns to Misselthwaite, to find Dickon waiting for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nymph

The moors were the same as she left them, which was, fortunately, exactly how she always imagined them to be. She dreamt of them late at night, curled in strange beds, until she could no longer resist the drumbeat in her head that was the longing for home.

Dickon was lying under the same old tree, playing the same old flute. He had the same old dark hair and the same old ruddy cheeks, though those disappeared under the beginnings of a dark beard. Mary took a moment to watch him and digest the changes, thinking that she herself was hardly immune to the ravages of time. She wondered how she looked to someone like Dickon, transforming from a sallow child, to a plumped girl, to this, a person blushing with womanhood. (This was a fact that Mary herself had not yet recognized, that she was in fact a woman and a pretty one at that, but the men in her travels had noticed very much. Mary, for her part, had never noticed them.)

"Is tha' goin' t' say hello, or just stand an' stare awhile?"

Dickon's bright smile was like a gift, far better than any trinket or bauble she'd ever received in her youth. She forgot her place and resorted to girlhood, rushing forth to embrace him, breathe in his earthy scent, and revel in him.

"I've missed you," she murmured into his coat. A loose feather fluttered from fabric into the air at her words. "I thought of you every day, Dickon, every day." Under her touch she felt muscles born of hard labor on the moors, the hardened body of a working man, unlike the lanky frames of London boys. A heady feeling overcame her, making her weak to the point she was very grateful for Dickon's arms about her, very grateful indeed.

"How sad for tha'."

Mary had to strain to gaze upwards into his eyes. Their time apart had gifted him with height. "And why is that?"

"Takin' to travelin' like thee did, an' nothin' to think o'er but me."

Mary laughed and nestled her head against his chest, which was far from proper, but then, she was far from a proper girl.

"And the garden?" she inquired, finally moving away. She had far from drunk her fill of Dickon, but her head burst with questions just as her heart burst with him. "How has it been faring?"

"It holds up as good as ever," said Dickon proudly. "Th' Magic is keepin' it alive, I reckon. Waitin' for thee to return, I 'spect, Mary." He grinned at her brightly, still boyish in his own way. "Got a su'prise for thee."

Mary followed him gaily down the garden paths, delighting in the simple pleasure that was her hand clasped in his calloused own. She felt warm all over from his touch and wondered if she could make this feeling last forever.

"Lilies!" she gasped, breaking free to dash to the side of the pond and wonder at the beautiful water lilies drifting lazily. "Oh, Dickon, they're lovely." Mary reached out, stroked the petals against her fingertips. She was so very glad to have returned home. She turned to look up at him and thank him for her gift, only to find Dickon staring at her with an intensity she'd never before experienced.

"What a sight tha' are," said Dickon. The lovely rich timbre of his voice left Mary with a startling revelation: that Dickon, too, had spent every day thinking of her. Every day.

On an impulse made from need rather than propriety, Mary rose to her feet and came to him. Magic had abandoned neither the garden nor them; Mary felt the pull so strongly, and just as it had introduced to the robin in the very beginning, it brought her to Dicken's side now.

Mary knew there were societal restrictions to which she was expected to adhere, but she only took note of the heat of Dickon's breath, the rasp of his beard against her soft skin, and the way his hands crept about her tentatively, as though he was all too aware of the impropriety of it all, before something else took hold of his thoughts, and his fingers grasped her firmly. Their longing was mutual.

Mary kissed him for what felt like hours, which seemed a good start to repaying the years of wanting without consummation. They kissed on the swing. By the tree. Spread haphazardly across the grass and breathing a hundred sweet floral scents. Dickon tucked a lily behind Mary's ear and kissed her, over and over again. Mary wondered that it should have felt like an ending, in her estimation, the answer to a question she'd long asked. Rather, it felt like a beginning, like a door opening to a world of possibility and the unknown, as when she'd first found the entrance to the garden and crept inside.

Feeling bold, she ran her hands over his body, marking the changes time and aging had made on him. She had thought she might feel quite timid about the whole thing, but then, Mary had never been a particularly timid girl. Nor was she the sort to deny herself anything if she wanted it enough. And she wanted Dickon very terribly, more than she'd ever wanted anything or certainly anyone.

"I want you," she said, the words insufficient for the full depth of emotion she felt for him, her Dickon. "I want all of you. Forever."

"Aye," said Dickon, his breath tickling her hair, "an' tha' shall have it. As if I can ever say no to thee."

Mary thrilled at the touch of his hand and the way he appreciated her womanhood with his caresses, and not the shocked, "Aye, Miss Lennox, what a woman tha's become!" that Martha had offered her.

Dickon's lips against her neck reminded her of the gentle landing of a butterfly. He nuzzled at her breast as a lamb might nuzzle for milk. But Dickon was no lamb. And neither was she. "Dickon," she said, threading fingers through his coarse hair, "if you please."

He did please, and he pleased her as well, his hands on her body, deftly undoing buttons and parting folds of silk and cotton and lace. Calloused, earth-smudged hands made their way across her pale flesh, marking her, connecting her to the world around them, though she did not know it at the time; she could see only Dickon. For his part, he drank in her sighs greedily, before they could catch a breeze and float away.

"I would never hope to hurt thee," he promised her softly. "But tha' mus' say if it does."

Mary nodded, although she did not quite understand, and then she _did_ understand, clamping her lips together on the tail end of a gasp. Dickon gazed at her, but she only braved a smile. She'd heard the vacuous, whispered gossip from the ladies she'd met in her travels, so she knew it would last but a moment, that a bit of discomfort would seem a small price to pay.

The ladies were correct. The feel of Dickon was nothing she'd ever known; above her, around her, and inside her. Mary felt Magic. A pleasure she had never known overtook her, and she clenched herself around him, holding him in the way she had wanted to do for so long, before she even knew she wanted it. She felt completely safe in his embrace. Dickon smiled at her through a haze, swirled the petals of a lily across her lips, then replaced them with his own. "I'm glad tha'rt back, Mary."

"I'm so glad to be home."


End file.
